Canadian athletes who are competing at the winter Olympics in Sochi are getting ready to head to Russia.
But many of them are still looking for financial support to be able to go.
North Vancouver’s Liam Firus, who made the Canadian Olympic figure skating team, is one of the athletes who finds funding hard to come by.
He held an event in his home town today to raise money.
Liam’s mother Lois Sullivan said on Unfiltered with Jill Krop tonight she’s had to sacrifice a lot to support her son’ skating.
One of the most drastic measures was selling her house.
But Sullivan says she does not look at sponsoring her son’s ambition as a strain.
“I never felt like I could turn around and say – you can’t do this anymore because I can’t afford it. That was never an option.”
Sullivan says figure skating is a very expensive sport.
“When you are making your way up, it takes a lot of money to reach that goal,” she says. “Until you are high profile and have succeeded on the international level, that is when you will start to see sponsorship money coming in.”
First gold medal winner of women’s ski cross at the 2010 winter Olympics Ashleigh McIvor says for her, sponsors stepped in ahead of time, but the Own the Podium program and the 10 million dollar funding that came with it gave many aspiring Olympians a much needed break and eventually resulted in more medals for Canada.
McIvor says the only shortfall is for athletes who do not consistently land on the podium.
“I think a lot of people do not realize that if you want to train as hard as you need to become one of the best athletes in the world and you are not necessarily there yet, you need to be working, because you are not receiving the support that you need to,” says McIvor. “It is pretty much impossible to train as hard as you need when you are working.”
Sullivan says Canadian system of sponsoring aspiring athletes is very different from other countries and most responsibility falls on the parents and the athletes themselves.
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